Failure
by kaliflower
Summary: What Spike was thinking in a few moments of his "dialogue" with Buffy in "Lessons".


"Don't you think I'm trying?" He yelled at the Slayer in an angry, pleading voice. He had tried to be so that he went to Africa to get his bloody soul back and now he knew what trying got him. Nothing, certainly not recognition for the attempt. She never understood how hard he tried. How hard he always tried. No one ever saw that he tried: certainty not Angel and Darla. Drusilla saw occasionally. Only in her more lucid moments.   
  
Through the dark basement shadows he saw the Slayer looking at him. It was odd, almost as if she cared, but more likely she was shocked and disgusted by the monster before her. He waited for her to pull a stake out of her jacket and drive it into his heart. It would at least stop him from having to try anymore.   
  
He had always tried hard. Even as a child, and it had not done him any good either. From his mortal school days, he remembered his Father's hard voice and his Mother's pleading eyes. They had wanted their bright son to do well at his studies and he had wanted to do well for them. But while many subjects had been easy for him, some seemed impossible to his youthful mind. "I'm not fast…I'm not a quick study." Suddenly, like so many times this summer his mind was pulled unwillingly into his past. If anything it was a relief to speed by the maiming and torture from his life as a vampire and stop at the constant humiliation his mortal one.   
  
Through the hazy memory he had of his existence as a human he saw this old school. Even in 1872 the school was old. Harrow was a renowned public school, one of the first of its kind in England. It was surrounded by green hills stretching out into the country side. The buildings were a gray stone that matched the color of the sky in winter. Inside it smelled of damp weather and young men going through puberty. William was a boy, must have been about fourteen, and had started at Harrow last year. He did not have too many friends; he stuttered when he was nervous and was awkward around his peers and superiors. Most of the teachers and students ignored William. A few teased him mercilessly.   
  
He liked the letters and languages. He excelled in reading, writing, Latin and French, and he enjoyed most of them too. It was all the other subjects that he had rapidly fell behind in. Numbers jumped and swam in his head, forever running out of his reach. Once a week he was caned and humiliated for getting his figures wrong at the large, dark chalkboard.   
His Mother and Father were disappointed with his performance in school. His Father, Mr. Fenton was the first son in his family and as such had not been able to pursue his love of learning. Instead he went into the family law firm, Fenton and Sons. William was the youngest son in his family. Even at fourteen, he knew that because he was the youngest male, he did not have to join the family firm. This did not stop his Father from planning out William's future for him. He was to fulfill his Father's dreams and be the scholar that Mr. Fenton could never have been. For William that meant he was sent to Harrow to receive the finest education available to him. It also meant that, he had to succeed, in a Di Vinci-like manner, at his studies. Unlike his older brother, Julian, who had been tutored at home and was spared the possibility of public humiliation.   
  
At this moment William was not thinking of any of this: not exactly. He knew that he had to do well or his Father would get a letter home and perhaps that would make his father come out of the guarded gray homes of South Kensington and personally see him at school. Spike could not remember why William had been so scared to have his Father come out, but he could remember the visceral terror it had produced in him. Even now it made his eyes well with tears.   
  
In his cramped desk William watched his math teacher scratch numbers on the black board. Headmaster Arthur Dowels enjoyed teaching the young minds of the boys that passed through the halls of Harrow. He thought of Master William as hardly talented and stupid in many ways. Dowels was, at best, a snob amongst the faculty, but respected because he could control his students with fear, humiliation and pain. The two best motivators as far as the teachers of Harrow were concerned. Not that these teachers were especially mean or punitive but all of them seemed to possess a sadistic streak, Dowels included.   
  
William heard Headmaster Dowels call his name and knew his moment at the board was coming. As he walked to the board could smell the cold winter air clinging to the windows and felt his pulse speed up. He had spent the whole week trying to understand the equations they had been working on, but he still did not know what they meant. The numbers swam in his head, darting out of the way every time he thought that he finally knew which direction to take the equation. He never thought that he would desperately wish to be in Latin, even ancient Greek would be better then this humiliation.  
  
The class was staring at the shrinking back of the least popular and influential member of their group as he struggled with another math equation on the board. William heard some of the snickers behind him. The shame reddened his ears and set his jaw with a grim determination. He stared at the board and wanted to cry. The chalk dust felt like it was filling his lungs and choking him. After what felt like hours he heard the Headmaster say, "Master William, do you have any idea how to solve the problem, or do you want to stand there staring at the board all day?"  
  
All he could reply was," n-no, Sir."  
  
"Well then sit down." Looking down over his glasses Headmaster Dowels called again, "Master Douglas, why don't you come and finish the problem that Master William could not." William sat down hunched over his desk. He was surprised that he was not in the middle of receiving a caning, but after looking over at Dowels face and knew that worse was in store for him.  
  
After class William was called over to his teacher's desk. "William," he said, "you are doing very poorly in this class. Your skills are competent in other classes, but it seems as if you never try in this one. I attempt to make things easier for you and you throw it back in my face. You cannot even solve the simple problems that I present you with on the board. You are a shame to the name of you family. For you to make it up I'm going to give you extra problems that you can do on your board. I want you to give me the answers in front of class tomorrow. If you cannot do this simple task to redeem yourself, we are going to have to write your father about your behavioral problems."  
  
William glared at the ground. He wished he could hit Headmaster Dowels. He was reminded of his mother when he felt this way. She would always make him some tea and stroke his head. She would whisper, "shhhhh…little William, we don't hit other people. Life is a thing of beauty and we do not stoop to the level of animals simply because we are angered."   
He admired his mother's control; it was something he never felt that he would have. Thinking of her warm embraces calmed him down as his imbecile of a Headmaster continued to lecture at his down turned head. For her and for his Father's respect, he decided he would try again at this horrible subject. He would try his hardest and would prove to his teacher that he did not have to write to his family and shame him in front of the class again.   
  
That evening William holed himself in his small room while his two roommates were out. He ended up working late into the night figuring and refiguring the problems he had on top of the other assignments that were due the next day. Timothy, the one person he trusted at all at his prison of a school, came in during the evening after dinner. "William, are you all right? Usually you love dinner time, but tonight you barely ate."  
  
"N-n-nothing is wrong…I just have an e-e-extra assignment that Headmaster Dowels gave me after class. I must finish it before we are put to bed. Now, if you don't mind, I-I must be getting back to my board." Timothy left his friend smirking. He meant the best and he did like William, but the boy had no sense of humor and could not take any blow to his pride. That, of course, made it all that much harder to watch every time William was beaten or rejected by another person.   
  
William managed to finish his assignments and go to bed just as the final inspection wound up in his dormitory room. He was so proud. He still did not understand every thing that the class had been covering this week, but what he had been assigned he did understand. He tried hard, for his mother and her comfort and to keep his father from knowing what a disappointment he was. As he went to sleep the moonlight glowed silver white illuminating the chalk numbers on his board. During the night clouds moved in over the moon and poured silent water down on the boarding school.   
  
The next morning woke William up with a gray and somber hand. The sun could barely penetrate the through the clouds and fires were lit in all the rooms to keep the November frost at bay. However, William was beaming with pride. He had rescued himself from humiliation at the hands of his Headmaster in Mathematics. He would surely be able to prove himself again, if he could do it this once. He lustily enjoyed his morning breakfast of porridge and sweet tea, while Timothy was gagging his down. They discussed the next cricket game to take place at school and how evil their Latin tutor was. Timothy could not remember when the last time he saw his friend in such a good mood. Usually, William was the type to brood about his unfortunate luck, and considering how bad it was, he brooded often.   
The rest of the morning was good for William. In his literature class they were discussing poetry and particularly the sonnets of Shakespeare. He had never thought about poetry before. He liked writing well enough. But there was something sincerely moving about the beauty, deep love and longing that filled the sonnets they had read and discussed in class today. They had even tried composing their own. He had been astounded about how much he enjoyed the feel of composing poetry. It was, at last, a place where he could place his feelings. He had written the first few lines of a sonnet to his mother, because she had unknowingly helped him through last night's arduous study. Somewhere deep inside him he wished that he could find a woman to love as much as Shakespeare had loved the woman he had written about.   
  
After poetry class William stepped out on the large quadrangle the school was built around. His math class was on the other side and this was the quickest way to get there. William was so excited about showing his accomplishments. It would be as if all his troubles never existed. The gray stone walkway, slick with water, reflected the figure of the small tawny haired boy. It watched him as he unconsciously stepped forward into the middle of a puddle.  
  
It also watched as his footing lost balance and William went tumbling down into the water, along with his homework from the night before. He lay in the puddle for almost a minute before he slowly sat up and glanced around for his chalkboard. Disbelief sprang from his features as he stared at the chalkboard, floating upside down in the puddle next to where he had landed.   
  
Slowly and silently he began to cry. The tears streamed down his face, salty rivers mutely falling to the ground. He sat there as he realized that he had to go to class, and he was late. As he stood up and walked to his mathematics class he felt his fragile world crash and his expectations drowned in the puddles he left behind. "Surely, I'll be caned," he said as his silent tears turned into loud sobs.   
Standing outside his classroom William knew that a caning was the best he could hope for. Headmaster Dowels was a vindictive man, and would be writing a letter to Williams home that afternoon. The indoor halls he had come from were so dark that the gray sky behind the windows was too bright and he flinched as he walked in the classroom. Something within him snapped, he could not accept going down without a fight. He had tried to make people proud, he had tried to earn some respect from his Headmaster, and show his Father and Mother that he was worth something. He tried to show them that he could live up to their dreams.   
And he had failed.  
  
"William, I see that you found a puddle on the way to the class room." Dowels said as he sized up the boys clothes. "I take it that you did your homework and the extra assignment that you were given?"  
  
"No," he tried to sound casual, nonchalant.   
  
Flabbergasted, Dowels eyes widened and he searched for his switch. How dare that young man act as if his own act of compassion was a mere trifle. "William, turn around." As Headmaster Dowels vented his frustrations onto his young pupil, William focused on the small cracks in the stone floor. He had failed everyone he was trying for. Slowly, for the second time that afternoon, he began to cry. Not from the physical pain of the caning or the mortification, those were something he had become somewhat adjusted to here at Harrow. No, he cried because he knew that he had failed his Father and Mother.  
  
Nearly a century and a half later, in a mind riddled with pain and guilt, Spike saw the failure that had filled his life. "Shoulda seen that coming."   
  
  
  
  
  
  
Thanks to Jen for reading this for me and giving such good advice. Thanks to spellchecker for making my writing legible. Thanks for reading and review if you like.   
  
And of course...I don't own nearly any of this. Certinally not the characters or the actual parts of the scripts that I used, but the rest is mine. Only divinly inspired by Joss. 


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